Traditionally, the way to develop Prolog programs has been to compile all the sources into memory and then to create saved-states for stable portions of the program. The use of saved-states avoids the need to recompile unchanged code each time that a testing/debugging session is started. It can also be used as a way of packaging a completed application for later re-use or for use by others.
This section explains the use of tools that provide an alternative approach to program development: compiling and linking your sources to build a stand-alone program. This is very much like the normal way of developing programs written in languages such as C.